Fascinating food in New York and occasionally farther afield

Kew Gardens

A little salty peanut butter ice cream is delicious. More can seem too much; I split my small serving with a palate-freshening cardamom pistachio, held in reserve at the bottom of the cup. More recently: peanut butter pie partnered with blackberry and eggnog, procured by Ethnojunkie.

Max and Mina's (Minn-ahs) Ice Cream71-26 Main St. (71st Rd.-72nd Ave.), Kew Gardens Hills, Queens718-793-8629www.Facebook.com /MaxAndMinasOpen most afternoons and early evenings; closed from late afternoon Friday until Saturday after sunset

Heavy on the sauce, steaming hot: a Polish-style pepper plumped with beef and rice. Compare the more slender, twinned Bosnian punjene paprike at Cevabdzinica Sarajevo, still my local standard-bearer for stuffed peppers.

In the name or tagline of a New York market, "Euro-" was once a nearly infallible indicator of Russian-speaking staff. Nowadays the language of choice might be Romanian, or Albanian, or another Balkan tongue. On a quiet afternoon the shopkeeper negotiated my purchase of a small pastry — but with so many poppy seeds! — in strongly accented English, before calling out greetings as a second customer crossed the threshold. Russian, after all.

(This venue is closed.) Tactic for securing fresh garlic knots: Observe crowded baseball fields of neighborhood youth league, calculate time until "good game, good game" handslaps, subtract a half-hour or so. These (four for $1) were still glistening from the oven.

"Warm it in the oven, this" the counterwoman said. The classic potato knick ($3.99) is similar to a kugel, but much more like a yeast bread than a baked pudding. Onion and black pepper (this one needed more) are other principal ingredients; butter and slices of apple are felicitous accompaniments.

Potato knick — or, as pronounced and more often spelled, potato nik or potatonik — is also known in a version that resembles a large latke meant to be cut into wedges. I haven't found citations of this style that long predate Mark Bittman's recipe, which seems to have been first published in 2006.

(This venue is closed.) Samsy are standard fare at Central Asian restaurants. Chopped lamb is the customary filling; a savory version featuring pumpkin is a welcome alternative. But until I'd set foot in this shop — which at a glance seemed to offer baked goods rooted in several Jewish communities — I'd never come across a walnut samsa ($1.50), and a sweet one at that. Hot from the oven would be even better.

Much rarer is this style of semolina-based halva
(about 65 cents per piece, at $12 per pound), made here by Bukharian Jews of Uzbek descent. (The photo with the edge-on view shows a halva of similar make, in an unlabeled container at a Rego Park grocery, provenance unknown.) Bits of almond and walnut, but not pistachio, are embedded within; I imagine that cardamom takes credit for the greenish-gold coloration. It's sweeter than the sesame-based stuff (how could it not be?) and to my taste more tempting. It's also much less messy to divvy up, should you be so inclined.

The package, and the identity of its contents, were no mystery. The baker had sent word that a complimentary bag of biscotti would be sent from her home kitchen to my mailbox; she hoped they wouldn't crumble. As you see, they did fine.

What the photo doesn't reveal is the lush, exotic aroma that greeted me when I opened the bag. Considering that the baker first passed along word to Eating In Translation readers, years ago, of the summertime Indonesian bazaars behind Masjid al-Hikmah, perhaps her choice of flavors is not so surprising. These may be the city's first gado-gado biscotti.